A special messenger had flown to his headquarters on Guam to brief him. Only recently had LeMay learned of the bomb. on August 5, General LeMay, who had overseen the recent firebombing of Japan’s important industrial cities, gave the final go-ahead for the 509th wing to fly the secret mission the following day-August 6. At one point, the Augusta’s Advance Map Room cabled the White House inquiring about any news of “the Manhattan Project.” White House Map Room operatives responded that they could find no evidence of any such project.įrom his headquarters on Guam in the South Pacific, at 2 p.m. Given the secrecy of the mission, he received no updates. These attacking planes saw no opposition.Īs the Augusta pushed deeper into the Atlantic, Truman’s curiosity over the bomb grew excruciating. The flames engulfed miles of Japanese cities. On August 2, the day Truman started his transatlantic journey home aboard the Augusta, Major General Curtis LeMay’s 21st Bomber Command struck the enemy with what The New York Times called “the greatest single aerial strike in world history.” Nearly 900 B-29s pounded targets with 6,632 tons of conventional and incendiary bombs. Army’s B-29 firebombing raids of cities such as Mito, Fukuyama and Otsu. In the Far East, Japan continued to burn, the result of the U.S.
He could only hope that it would serve its purpose: to end the war, to save lives. He had told himself in his diary, days earlier, that “military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children.” Surely he knew that this bomb, as technologically marvelous as it was, did not have the sentience to separate military individuals from civilians.